As outlined in a patent awarded earlier this month, Google's system is actually a fairly simple one at the top level. Basically, a car uses some manner of shock sensors that trigger when a pothole is hit, and then the car beams the GPS location of the hole up to servers that keep a catalogue of where the holes are.

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There is however a little more nuance deeper down. Specifically it also uses the sensors (and information from other cars) to create data on how bumpy a road is on average. The deviation from this norm helps to highlight how bad a pothole is and gives cars a value to check against to make sure their sensors aren't out of whack. You can bet this will wind up on Google's self-driving cars.

Of course identifying potholes is only one part of the problem, one that similar systems from Land Rover and the city of Boston (which uses smartphone sensors to detect bumps) aim to solve as well. Hopefully once we have a wealth of data on what holes are worst and where they are, we can at least prioritize which ones to fix. I guess we'll still have to wait for the patent on cars that can fill potholes on the go.